Low-tech Magazine

UNESCO sets up online Traditional Knowledge Database

The freshly launched "International Traditional Knowledge Institute" (ITKI) is an ambitious effort to preserve, restore and promote the re-use of traditional skills and inventions from all over the world. It includes an online encyclopaedia of low-tech know-how, though it will take many years before it is completed.

A do-it-ourselves guide

Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew have written a book that reads as a practical interpretation of Low-tech Magazine: “Toolbox for sustainable city living, a do-it-ourselves guide”.

Both authors regard the current ecotech trend as a salve for guilty consciences and focus instead on low-tech systems and solutions that can be built and maintained by people without any scientific or engineering background, using cheap, salvaged and recycled materials.

How to depave a roadway and reclaim the land for food production? How to clean contaminated soils and water bodies? How to recycle wastewater in a scavenged bathtub? How to raise turkey, ducks, insects and fish? How to cultivate mushrooms on logs? How to build a windmill or a rocket stove? The book provides a toolbox of skills, technologies, tactics and step-by-step instructions to give city dwellers access to, and control over, life’s necessities.

Publisher South End Press has granted Low-tech Magazine permission to publish an excerpt of the book online. It gives detailed instructions on how to build a floating trash island, a low-tech way to clean up rivers, canals, lakes and estuaries. Related: How to make everything yourself / How to make your own low-tech vertical farm / How to tie the world together: online knotting reference books.

Leave the algae alone

While the first generation of biofuels is wreaking havoc on the environment and the food markets, the second generation is set to make things even worse.

Since it has become clear that ethanol and biodiesel made from food crops are doing more harm than good, the hope for finding a substitute for oil has shifted to algae and cellulose. If we can believe the advocates of this ‘second generation’ of biofuels, these combustibles will deliver way more energy than it takes to make them, without threatening the world’s food and water supplies. Upon taking a closer look, however, this is very hard to believe. They might even cause bigger problems than biofuels made from food crops. Maybe this time around we could sort this out before the damage gets done?

Why bottled water is good for the environment

Drinking bottled water is a much more ecological choice than consuming soft drinks, coffee, fruit juice or beer. Water drinkers should be praised instead of criticized.

Bottled water is under attack from environmentalists who preach that tap water has a similar quality and saves a lot of energy since it does not need to be transported by trucks. That might be true, but bottled water is not our biggest problem when it comes to drinking habits.

All other beverages consume huge amounts of water and energy during their production processes, which makes their ecological impact far more detrimental than that of bottled water. Like bottled water, most of them are distributed in bottles and cans, too. (Illustration: plan59)

Water eats energy: desalination

If we fail to reduce water use, we may safely double predictions on future energy consumption.

Desalination – the process of turning seawater into fresh water - is increasingly becoming the world's solution to a growing water shortage problem. But if we count on the oceans to fulfill our future need, we have to find an extra 30.000 terawatt-hours of energy - twice the current global electricity production figure. (Picture: Nicolas Metzl)